All businesses have a legal requirement to monitor their financial position and to maintain proper financial accounting records. Financial accounting systems, and the reports and summary information that are generated by such systems, are required by business owners in order to meet their obligations to file Goods and Services Tax Statement, Business Activity Statements and Tax Return Statements. In addition, financial reports are required for the most basic of management decisions and determinations regarding profitability of a job, the solvency or viability of the company and the profitability of the business. Businesses of different types have various requirements for following up on outstanding invoices, reconciling various accounts, registering security interests and the like.
Existing financial accounting systems typically involved intensive manual effort and, in instances where automatic processing has been used, intensive user intervention. Typically, a human book keeper is required to interpret paper and electronically transmitted transaction records, categorize them and/or identify, extract, augment and input (by manually keying in or manual selection of variables on screen in drop down or other graphical representations) key transaction data into a computerized accounting system.
Existing financial accounting systems frequently require manual data entry or require the manual categorization of financial transactions where:                1. the communication of transaction details occurs only via paper documentation (e.g. receipts, invoices, etc);        2. the details of the financial transaction are not digitally transmitted in a complete format that includes details such as the amount of tax included in the total value, the nature of the transaction from a financial accounting stand point (e.g. is it a cost of sale, an operating cost, to what General Ledger code should the transaction be assigned, etc.), the specific identify of the other party to a transaction;        3. the details of the financial transaction are not transmitted digitally to a party in a pre-agreed format or using a pre-agreed protocol (the transaction information may be available in a standard format but the two parties have not worked together to define that format or ‘integrate’ their respective systems); and/or        4. the system transmitting the details and the system receiving the details of the transaction are not linked or integrated in a purpose specific way (e.g. the internet is not a purpose specific linking) with each other enabling additional information regarding the transaction (specifically the identity of the other party to each individual transaction) to be associated with the transaction data or inferred based on the originating node (or system) of the data packet (e.g. the accounting and computer systems of the two or more parties to a transaction are not linked via a network where the linked systems are identified to each other such that the originating system equates to specific information about the transactions from that system, or using an agreed protocol for exchanging complete transaction information).        
A human book keeper is often required by existing financial accounting systems to manually interpret transaction information and subsequent manually associate transactions with their counterparts in a double entry accounting system in any situation where this information is not explicitly included in a digital transaction record. Manual interpretation is also required for transaction information and subsequent categorization of transactions within the chart of accounts. Errors or discrepancies are also introduced by the human data entry and manual assignment processes in existing financial accounting systems.
Existing financial accounting systems require the manual creation of unique application and data base rules by each business/user for associating transactions containing specific pre-defined character strings and received in specific formats to particular General Ledger codes as part of the implementation of a new financial accounting system or the transition from one system to another. There is also a requirement by many existing financial accounting systems for the manual creation of unique application and data base rules for use on subsequent transaction by each business/user for associating transactions containing a specific character string (and received in specific format) during the initial manual process of associating a transaction containing that defining string of characters to their counterparts in a double entry system or to a particular account within the chart of accounts.
A common protocol or standard formatting is often required to be used in existing financial accounting systems by parties for exchanging transaction data or transaction information (whether electronically or via paper document).
Transaction participants (e.g. biller and payee) are often required by existing financial accounting systems to utilize a unique code per relationship to enable transactions data to be appropriately entered and/or matched to a business' financial accounting records and/or counterpart in a double entry system or to be recorded within a chart of accounts.
The above and other difficulties have presented challenges to the effective and efficient management of business transactions.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an automated accounting system for processing transaction documents including one or financial transaction entries which ameliorates or overcomes any one or more of these difficulties. It would also be desirable to provide an automated accounting system which is simple, efficient, accurate and/or minimised the requirement for human intervention.